Still in Saigon

LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM (B) - On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, we examine Rory Kennedy's remembrance of the ugly American exit from South Vietnam.

This is a well-curated PBS documentary (it's streaming at the "American Experience" page) that excels in that paint-by-numbers format. The second half of the film, which zeroes in those final days as the communists surged toward the South's capital, is a sensational recounting of the mayhem of the evacuation of Americans and sympathetic South Vietnamese.

A smart mix of talking heads includes former CIA and State Department officials, Marines and soldiers, and Vietnamese migrants who survived the ordeal, one of whom spent 15 years doing hard labor in a re-education camp. We get a good chunk of news clips from the era, including era interviews with the ambassador who seemed slow to act at first but later insisted on being one of the last ones out as he sought to rescue as many South Vietnamese as possible (among them, the embassy cook and the local tailor).

Kennedy (born six months after dad RFK's assassination) spends an inordinate amount of time up front setting in place the run-up to April 1975, two years after the Paris accords ostensibly ended the war and gave the United States peace with honor. But at the halfway point, a switch flips, and we are embedded in the events of the final days and, eventually, the final harrowing hours. First-person accounts -- including from the last U.S. military personnel to be airlifted out -- narrate the on-the-ground footage by news organizations that captured the evacuation in incredible detail.

In that way, "Last Days" plays like a riveting page-turner. The randomness of who will make it past the embassy gates and onto one of the flights to a Navy ship or to the Philippines is the raw stuff of human drama.

The details are fascinating. Would-be refugees gathered around the embassy pool. Marines and soldiers frisked each person and tossed weapons and ammunition into the pool. Witnesses describe a mother hanging out of a helicopter and dropping her baby into the arms of a Marine. A valiant water-landing by a South Vietnamese pilot is the stuff of suspense dramas.

Kennedy creates a microcosm of the war itself. Good intentions, honorable efforts, but a hellish clusterfuck destined to end badly. Watching the way we struggled to exit, a pregnant question hangs in the air: Why did we get sucked into that place to begin with?